Some of the world’s top soccer players will walk onto the stadiums this June for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, wearing environmentally-friendly and technologically-advanced kits. All of Nike’s national teams, including Brazil; Portugal; and The Netherlands, will be wearing jerseys made from recycled polyester, each one produced from up to eight recycled plastic bottles.
To make these kits, discarded plastic bottles from Japanese and Taiwanese landfill sites were sourced and were melted down to produce new yarn that was later converted to fabric for the jerseys. The process saves raw materials and reduces energy consumption by up to 30% compared to manufacturing virgin polyester. This range of national jerseys, means that nearly 13-million plastic bottles, totaling nearly 254 000 kg of polyester waste, were prevented from going into landfill sites.
All the national team kits have been designed with each country’s national culture and identity in mind.
